Berkshire Hathaway said Friday that it benefited from an improving economy and investment gains related to its acquisition of BNSF railroad in the first quarter as it rebounded from last year’s loss to deliver $3.6 billion in net income.

Berkshire said it earned $2,272 per Class A share during the quarter. That’s after last year’s loss of $1.5 billion, or $990 a share, as it wrote down the value of its ConocoPhillips investment.

Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett discussed the highlights of Berkshire Hathaway’s quarterly earnings at last Saturday’s shareholders’ meeting in Omaha but didn’t release detailed information about the quarter until Friday.

The four analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected Berkshire to report earnings per share of $1,101.83 on average.

The addition of Burlington Northern added $282 million net income for Berkshire between the day the acquisition closed on Feb. 12 and the day the quarter ended on March 31.

— Associated Press

Yuma farm eyed in E. coli outbreak

Lettuce grown in Yuma, Ariz., may be the source of a widespread E. coli outbreak in romaine lettuce that has sickened at least 19 people and prompted a recall in 23 states.

Federal investigators are looking at a farm in Yuma as a possible source for the outbreak, according to the distributor who sold the lettuce.

Freshway Foods of Sidney, Ohio, said Thursday it recalled lettuce sold in 23 states and the District of Columbia because of a possible link to an E. coli outbreak that has sickened at least 19 people — three with life-threatening illness.

College students at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Ohio State in Columbus and Daemen College in Amherst, N.Y., are among those who were affected by the outbreak, according to health departments in those states. The health officials said most of the victims were sickened in April and have already recovered.

The recall applies only to romaine lettuce with “best if used by” date before or on May 12, when Freshway Foods stopped buying its romaine from Yuma.

— Associated Press

WorLd

Toshiba: First annual profit in 3 years

Toshiba, the world’s second-biggest maker of flash memory chips, forecast its first annual profit in three years, helped by demand for semiconductors that store data in mobile phones and other consumer electronics.

Net income may reach 70 billion yen ($760 million) in the year ending March 2011, after a loss of 19.7 billion yen, the Tokyo company said Friday in a statement. The forecast compares with the 105 billion-yen average of 12 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg in the past four weeks.

Toshiba joins Samsung Electronics, the world’s biggest memory chipmaker, in benefiting from rising demand for chips that store songs and photos on products such as Apple’s iPhone and iPad. Revenue in the flash memory market will climb 34 percent to $18.1 billion this year, according to El Segundo-based researcher ISuppli.

Toshiba, which has gained 2 percent this year, declined 1.1 percent to close at 521 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange before the announcement. The benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average dropped 3.1 percent.

Three women have told the New York Times that music mogul Russell Simmons raped them, the latest in a cascade of serious allegations of sexual misconduct against powerful men in entertainment, media, politics and elsewhere.